Superheroes
by middkidash
Summary: A glimpse into Brigitte and Tyler's existence after the events of Pick Your Poison. Rated M for language.


Author's note:

Disclaimer--I own nothing to do with the GS franchise. I'm just a kid in a candy store.

This has been long in the works--a glimpse into what has transpired since the events of Pick Your Poison. It's intended to be a two-part foray, and perhaps a segue into something more elaborate involving this pairing, if and when I have time to explore that.

Please read and review--I appreciate every one, especially those containing constructive criticism.

Enjoy! Hopefully I'll get the next part up before another year goes by ;)

Ash

* * *

The moon hung low in the night sky, casting a glow over a man standing tentatively at the entrance of a rundown motel. He was short and portly with round-rim glasses, a lover of all varieties of food and women who never wanted him back. At the moment, though, his dismal existence had taken a turn into realms of the inexplicably weird, and his many failures had been blotted out by the presence of something foreboding in his immediate future. Love and its machinations, indeed, were the last things on his mind that night. Glancing furtively about, he pulled back his sleeve to glance at the digital readout on his watch. 

_Three fifty-two, _he thought, shaking his head,_ Too early._

He shuffled his feet back and forth, but didn't move into the parking lot. He didn't want to seem suspicious. He paced, kept checking his watch, waved off the one taxi that pulled over invitingly. He pretended, rather ineffectually, to wait for someone. In reality, it was someone who was waiting for him.

The man picked at his acne-strewn chin in earnest as he counted the seconds out in his head. When the last red digit on the readout had shifted to 6, he wiped the sweat from his brow and slowly put one foot in front of the other until he was resting on the doormat to room 13. The sea green paint on the door was peeling back to reveal an unsavory ochre color, and as he put his fist lightly to its surface several flecks attached themselves to his skin.

There was no answer. The man knocked again, louder. Nothing. He mentally reviewed his instructions.

_One, _he thought, _call the number provided and make an appointment. The client should be prepared to meet in the early morning hours. _

_Two, go to the designated location of the meeting. The client should be sure not to draw attention to his or herself. _

The man knocked again, with more force than he had intended. As his hand made contact with the wood, the resulting sound reverberated across the lot. A light went on in a room two doors down.

_Three, wait to be admitted to the designated meeting place. _

The man was beginning to panic. He held his watch up again and squinted as the readout changed to four o'clock. Nothing happened.

Mumbling to himself, the man reached up and prepared to knock again.

Suddenly, the door he was standing in front of swung inward to reveal a murky interior. There was no one to greet him. Instead, a gruff voice came from somewhere back in the darkness.

"Come in," it commanded. Gulping, the man did as he was told.

Once inside, the man could see little, but when he turned back towards the door, it swung shut.

"What…what…" the man stuttered, but then out of the black he saw a flicker of movement and heard a dull scraping sound. A match flared, and the tiny light pulled through the air to ignite the wick of a solitary candle. The candle, a tall white taper, sat in front of a figure, a blond man who held a pistol loosely in his left hand and a slim cigarette in his right. He placed the cigarette between his lips and lowered his face to the flame. His face was handsome in a generic way, save several scars that ran along his jaw-line and across his nose. The man's eyes, catching the light, shone a shade of blue so intense the client thought perhaps the hue was artificial.

The blond man, perhaps the same person he had spoken to on the phone, sat athletically arranged in his chair and took a long drag from the cigarette.

"I didn't think you were ever planning on coming in, Mister…What did you say your name was again?"

"Sanders. Joe Sanders," squeaked the porcine client. He became aware, though he knew not how, that there was someone else in the room, someone lurking just out of sight, in shadow.

"Why don't you turn on the overhead lights, please," suggested the blond man. Unsure of whether or not he should obey, Sanders shuffled a bit in place and made to turn.

"Not you," the blond man commanded, when Sanders showed signs of movement. It was then that Sanders realized the request had been directed not at him, but at the room's unidentified third occupant.

"Oh dear," said Mr. Sanders. He felt increasingly faint as a cloudy form shifted towards him from the opposite corner. Hundreds of possibilities rushed through his head, but most of them involved a very large opponent with fists like hammers, beating him to a pulp.

"Oh my," he repeated, and closed his eyes. He kept them shut for what seemed like an excruciating amount of time as the form drew closer, and closer, until it positioned itself directly beside him.

Mr. Sanders gulped as the tiny light provided by the candle disappeared.

And then the dingy interior of the motel room lit up with the flip of a switch.

Trembling, Mr. Sanders turned slowly to confront the creature of darkness, and couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief when he saw its true form. Beside him, a petite woman with long dark hair and eyes like liquid amber stood frowning.

As Mr. Sanders caught his breath in relief, she went to stand behind the blond man's chair, her movements both awkward and predatory in the same instant.

"Excuse our initial behavior, Mr. Sanders," said the blond man with a short chuckle, "But we find the whole 'intimidation' thing necessary to tell who, exactly, we are dealing with. I trust you won't give us any trouble?"

"No. No. It's all…that's fine. I understand," said Mr. Sanders, feeling better because of the light, but still unsure of the two people before him. He studied the woman with more intensity. She possessed features that were not particularly attractive, and was neither blonde, buxom, or bronzed to perfection. In fact, she was the complete opposite of the type Sanders employed in his female fantasies—but there was something intriguing about her nonetheless.

Sanders suddenly realized he was staring, and brought his gaze upward to find she was glaring back. She had crossed her arms, and the color of her eyes seemed to shift to a darker shade of gold.

"Baby," said the man, clearly intending both a statement of possession and a warning in his tone. She tore her eyes away from Sanders and looked at the man instead, who issued some non-verbal command through a single touch, on her arm. She retreated towards the back of the room and began rustling through a pile of articles.

Overall, they seemed to Sanders an odd pair—the large, brutish man and the delicate, wiry woman—but they both had the dark circles of fatigue under their eyes, and a wariness about their manners that indicated this was only the latest of many similarly tiresome transactions.

"Sit down," said the man, his voice subdued. "I hear that you've got a problem, Mr. Sanders. I'm afraid you'll have to run through the details again for the benefit of my associate."

"Ummm, sure," said Mr. Sanders, pulling the other chair away from the table as far as possible, and then sitting on the edge of his seat.

"Wait," said the blond man, "First things first." He stroked his gun like one would a precious pet. "A thousand dollars up front, another thousand when the job is done. Is that correct, Mr. Sanders?"

"Yes. That's what we agreed."

The woman, having returned to the blond man's side, leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He lifted his hand off the gun and brought it up to turn the woman's face away, so he could whisper back. They then exchanged what seemed to Mr. Sanders like a significant glance, and he noticed that she had claimed her companion's cigarette. She placed her unoccupied hand on the man's shoulder and, with the other, flicked a line of ashes away. They seemed to be waiting for something.

"The money, Mr. Sanders?" asked the woman, frowning, "You do have it?"

"Oh, yes, yes, sorry." He reached to his back pocket and withdrew his wallet. After fumbling with the folds a bit, he proceeded to withdraw, two or three at a time, a large number of fifty dollar bills. He placed them in a haphazard stack on the table, a pile that the blond man swept across the surface towards himself as soon as Mr. Sanders had closed his wallet. As he proceeded to count, the woman turned her golden gaze back on the client.

"Go ahead, Mr. Sanders. Tell us your story."

So Joe Sanders, secretly wishing he could shoot himself with the blond man's gun, divulged the very embarrassing reason he was in room thirteen at all.

"Well," he began, swiping the back of his hand across his head again and plastering a swath of greasy dark hair to his forehead in the process, "It happened Tuesday evening. I was outdoors…such a lovely night…and so I thought I'd climb the tree in my front yard to get a better look at the…ummm…stars. Difficult to see them when standing under a street light, you know…"

"I had made quite a bit of progress and had settled in to, you know…gaze…and then I noticed there was something going on in my neighbor's backyard. Lovely woman…body of a goddess…not that I was…well, it's difficult to explain, really…"

"Mmmm hmmmm," muttered the woman, easily surmising Sanders' true reasons for climbing the tree.

"Move on, Mr. Sanders," smirked the blond man, and the client blushed scarlet before he did.

"Well, she has two dogs, a shepherd and a mutt of some kind, stupid things, and they were barking their heads off that night—what a ruckus. And then, all of a sudden, I heard these awful growls and then…then there was no more barking. At all. I thought that was a little strange…"

"Reasonably so," prodded the blond man.

"Yes, well, I tried to inch forward on the branch to get a better look into her yard, but the strap of my…binoculars…got caught and I lost my balance…and nearly strangled myself to death trying to keep my grip."

"You fell," stated the woman, a hint of impatience in her voice, "And where was your lady during all of this?"

"She's not mine…well, I wish she was…quite impossible, though, as she's…"

"Mr. Sanders," the woman growled, revealing a set of teeth that rivaled those of the dogs he despised, "We haven't got all morning."

"She was in the shower," Mr. Hutchins admitted, "And when I went over to knock on her door, she came down…fully clothed, unfortunately…and said she hadn't heard a thing. So we went around to her back yard and…well, it was awful. Blood and gore everywhere, like the set from a horror film. The dogs…didn't even look like dogs any more. But whatever had done it…it was long gone by that time."

"Typical," said the blond man.

"How so?" asked Mr. Sanders, "I mean, what exactly is going on here? Am I in any danger?"

The woman snorted incredulously.

"I mean," Mr. Sanders corrected hastily, "Are we all in any sort of danger?"

"Stay in your houses, doors locked, from dusk until dawn tomorrow night, and you'll be fine," said the blond man, "We deal with this sort of thing all the time."

"Yes, but I'm curious—what sort of thing, exactly, are you dealing with?"

"Mr. Sanders," said the woman, "We were highly recommended, I assume?"

"Ummm, I guess," Sanders mumbled. A colleague, after hearing an edited version of his story, had wordlessly handed over a piece of notebook paper, a telephone number the only thing scrawled on the large page. 'You didn't get this from me,' the colleague said before slipping out of Sanders' cubicle.

"It doesn't matter how you found us," the blond man said, seemingly reading his thoughts, "As long as you trust that we'll get the job done."

"Don't you trust us, Mr. Sanders?" asked the woman, her head cocked to the side as she awaited his answer.

"I can't really afford not to," he said, gesturing at the small pile of money the blond man had compiled.

"I think that's all we need to know, Mr. Sanders," said the blonde man, smiling bemusedly as his companion slid the cash the rest of the way across the table and into a duffel bag. Sanders noted, wide-eyed, that the bag was brimming with small bills. The woman slid the zipper shut and tossed the bag onto the bed. As he stood up, and crossed to exit the room, passing close by the bed, Sanders thought he heard a faint growl issue from the woman's throat.

"Shouldn't I…" he began, pausing in the doorway, but the blonde man cut him off with an abrupt wave of the gun.

"We have the address you gave us."

"But don't you…"

"We'll find you," said the woman. She flitted her gaze to the doorway, and in that golden glance Sanders saw he was no longer welcome in the room. As if she assumed him a bit thickheaded, the woman took a step forward towards the client to emphasize her point.

"I'll…I'll just be going now," Mr. Sanders muttered, slipping his blubbery form out into the night, not turning to look back at the people to which he had entrusted his fate.

He stood on the corner for a few minutes before a taxi coasted into view. Hailing it with enthusiasm, Mr. Sanders ducked inside the vehicle when it stopped, sighing in relief.

_We'll find you._ Something in the woman's tone had made Sanders wonder if he really wanted to be found. The other thousand dollars, though, tucked away in his desk drawer at work, ensured that they would meet again. The client settled back into his seat and tried to forget about the strange meeting. Instead, smacking his lips with delight, he plotted, ticking off the ways he would like to comfort his neighbor in her time of need on his stubby little fingers.

* * *

The money lay heaped in the black duffel bag, half-buried in the mussed comforter that neither of the hotel room's occupants had bothered to straighten before the arrival of their nervous visitor. 

"That went well," mused the man, running a finger along his jaw-line, meeting resistance in the form of several days' worth of stubble.

"I could have done without the creepy backstory," his companion muttered, still hovering near the bed as if defending their earnings had ever been necessary.

"A sad, sad man," he agreed, "But you asked for the unedited version."

"I know. Next time I won't bother."

The man stepped to the window, pulling back the curtain to survey the beginnings of a sunrise. She, letting down her guard slowly, couldn't repress the yawn that had been plaguing to overpower her throughout the meeting.

"You're tired, Brigitte," he said, tossing a smile over his shoulder. The expression lightened his scarred features, softening them for a moment. He turned off the light, but she could see him clearly, the shadows playing off his form in a subtle, sensual way.

"I am," she replied, turning away to pace across the room, "But there's so much we need to do. Scout the area, search the woods, buy more bullets…"

She was cut short, however, when she turned to retrace her steps and found him blocking her path.

"Tyler…"

"Come to bed. You need to rest."

Frowning, she tried to step around his form, but he caught her easily, continued to bar her way to a productive morning. She knew how Tyler would have her spend the time, and although she didn't dislike his little ways of helping her relax, she felt the need to be productive, to make sure the job they would do the next evening would go smoothly. But Brigitte was too tired, she admitted to herself, to fight him. She sighed heavily as he buried his hands in her thick tresses, moved his lips to her throat.

"I need to brush my teeth," she protested, remembering the early morning takeout they had devoured just hours before.

Tyler just laughed.

"Brush them in the morning," he said, plucking at the hem of her tee-shirt.

"It is morning," insisted Brigitte, but she knew it didn't matter. The room remained cloaked in darkness, and to him, it was still night, the hour of intimacy. They made love endlessly—or so it seemed to her. One encounter blended into another without much distinction. His appetite was insatiable, and sometimes she would fleetingly wish for the days before her awakening. These were silly sentiments, though, made by a woman who had once been an awkward, uneducated girl. Her new knowledge was still a novelty, still a cause for deep reflection.

But reflection in Tyler's presence was seldom easy. He was a dominant force, not unlike her long dead sister, commanding all of her attention when hovering within her sphere.

He caressed the canine curve of her ear, kissed her, made a funny face on purpose when he pulled away.

"See, I told you," she insisted, taking a step towards the shadows of the bathroom. His laughter brought her back.

"Oh, Brigitte. Two years with me and you still have yet to lighten up," he smirked.

"Two long, painful years," she teased, "How ever have I survived?"

"I wish I knew," whispered Tyler. He released her, slithering onto the bed. He tossed the duffel bag onto the floor.

"Come to bed," he commanded. It was an order given with a great deal of affection, but Brigitte could still hear the hint of authority in his voice, one that had yet to wear entirely away.

She could refuse him. But Brigitte, who understood herself better than most, knew she wouldn't. The wolf danced inside her, anticipating the event that always served to sate, in part, its unearthly cravings, and, in turn, always left it wanting for more.

"All right," Brigitte said, pulling her shirt over her head, letting her jeans fall to the floor. With a wicked smile, one he seemed unable to hide whenever she entered a state of undress around him, Tyler followed suit.

She emptied her mind, and let him carry her away.

* * *

Tyler had had many women, but he had never felt more content when, afterwards, he would watch Brigitte sleep. The hard lines that often served to intimidate at the height of the day disappeared in the folds of night, leaving her features, softened in slumber, quite serene. 

"Two years," he murmured to himself, stroking the little curve of her belly and marveling at how, after months of eating properly, her form had gone from almost skeletal to a sleek, smooth slender. Her hair, tumbling across her naked body, had grown lustrous. And the hue of her skin had swelled to a delicious pink, pale still but perfectly tinged.

Tyler dozed off with her securely in his arms. When he woke from his deep dreamless daze, he found Brigitte looking sedate, watching him as he had watched her hours before. Her golden eyes caught what little light had edged around the window blinds, and the color fluctuated, danced, ever in motion.

He smiled and tried to snake his arms around her, but she sat up and turned to look at the clock.

"It's almost noon," she said, gathering up her hair into a loose pile atop her head.

Giving him a teasing look through the crook of her arm, she loosened her grip on the dark tresses and let them cascade down her bare back.

"Stay a little longer," Tyler pleaded, sitting up as well. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and she reached up absently to stroke his face. Just as he was about to place his arms in a position to keep her there, though, Brigitte slid smoothly off the bed and out of his reach.

It wasn't unusual for her to act this way the day of a job. How she managed to keep her distance in the infinitely intimate way they lived was beyond Tyler, but he maintained a sense of the window she kept between them. Today she would draw the curtains and keep him out, but after their task was complete, she might throw up the sash and let him climb back in.

She moved around the room as if he wasn't there, rummaging through and rearranging things, until she made the mistake of stepping too close to where Tyler was still lying languorously on the bed. Waiting until she was preoccupied with perusing the hand-drawn map they had made the day before, Tyler extended his leg carefully and caught her behind the knees, toppling Brigitte back into his arms.

"I got you," he said, smiling. She sighed heavily but smiled back nonetheless.

"Existing alongside you is incredibly detrimental to my productivity."

"Hey—I resent that. I help you get things done…" He winked at her, and she shook her head.

"Oh, Tyler. If it were up to you we'd never leave the bed. Last time I checked, killing werewolves is what pays the rent. And therefore, quite necessary to our continued possession of a bed in which to stay."

"I know. 'Must keep the world safe from the wolves', and all that. I admire how noble you are, almost as much as I admire how gorgeous you are…right now…the sun coming up over your shoulder…"

He moved to kiss her, but she jerked her head away. He merely tightened his grip.

"You smell…so…good," Tyler breathed, pressing his nose to her skin and inhaling deeply, "It's intoxicating."

"Which is why, after this job, we'll have to split up for awhile. Just until it passes."

Tyler paused, tried to catch her gaze. She kept hers down, fixating on her hands, twisting the rumpled sheet between her fingers.

"How unfair," Tyler said, mumbling into her shoulder, "You always have to leave when I want you the most."

"You remember what happened," said Brigitte, "I can't go through that again."

"And I don't want you to, babe, but it's so hard to let you go when you get like this. I just want to…" Tyler's hands skimmed over territory that had become familiar, but Brigitte took hold of his wrists, pushed them away.

"I know," she interjected, "I know. But you promised." There was a note of pain in her stressed voice, and Tyler realized abruptly that the time had come to relent, to let her have her way.

"Okay, baby. We'll split up for a week. But don't wander too far. _That_ was your promise."

Brigitte nodded, slipped from his embrace quickly, started rifling through their bags again. Still stationery, Tyler watched and waited. He felt an immense sympathy when the moment came. She stopped in mid-action as if caught in a trance, and then fleetingly touched her abdomen before shaking herself into motion again.

"I'm sorry," Tyler murmured, and Brigitte flicked her eyes to him, cocked her head.

"What?" she asked. He thought about repeating it, louder, but he was afraid to take the blame. They were both at fault, for the incident and what had come after. In his need to protect her he wanted to shoulder it all himself, but that was something she would never allow. She was stubborn in that way, and prepared to hate him should he try to skew the situation any different.

"Nothing," he muttered, shaking his head.

Brigitte got her toothbrush out of the bag and disappeared into the bathroom.

* * *

It had been winter, their second together if you counted the remnants of the one they experienced when fleeing Happier Times, which Tyler did. They had just begun working the small towns, getting rid of the vermin—the canine kind, at any rate. They were getting along in a middling sort of way. Each wanted to devote the majority of their time to their favorite activities—fucking and researching, respectively—and as a result, they didn't accomplish much unless there was a job at hand. They never faltered when it came to that—it was the domestic things that made them weary. 

Amidst all the machinations of their odd everyday existence, the werewolf was an ever-present threat shocked into sterility. Regular injections made Brigitte's dual consciousness manageable; getting inside her head, figuring out what made her tick, had been the difficult part for Tyler. Despite the climatic progress they had made during their trip east, it remained an uphill battle. She could be cold, cross and often infuriating—and somehow even the baser parts of her personality only made Tyler want her more. Whether she felt similarly about him and his was difficult to say—he only knew that although she had possessed plenty of opportunities to take off and resume her solitary existence—he no longer held her captive, after all—she hadn't. Part of her craved him the way he craved her—part of her needed him.

It had come upon her swiftly—her first heat since Happier Times. Tyler hadn't expected the frenzy that took hold of his mind, the smell of her on the cold morning air driving him insane with desire. They had fucked like the animals they both carried inside them, barely aware for a week that there was life in the world outside each other. And then as suddenly as it had begun, her cycle ended. Their lives continued as if that space of time had never transpired—a mesh of sex and death, injections and books, an existence that might have driven a normal person mad.

There were no signs, no indications that something, this time, was different. They had never used protection—had never seen the need because Tyler, after years of fucking girl after girl, had failed to impregnate a single one, and so thought himself infertile—a side effect, perhaps, of his lycanthropic blood. But Brigitte wasn't human any more, and so the human terms of pregnancy did not apply—there was no morning sickness, no missed menstruation cycles. Her stomach swelled, making room for the being they had created. She guessed her condition long before he might have noticed, and she tried to hide it. When Tyler finally found out, there was little time to get past the pain of being kept in the dark, the astonishment and the panic, to stab blindly at happiness.

He had found her doubled over on the floor of one of the hotel rooms, subject to such intense pain she could barely speak. Hospitals and ambulances were out of the question, so Tyler did the best he could to make her comfortable.

The ordeal lasted hours, the contractions coming and going in hot waves and leaving Brigitte panting, feral with the pain. The wolf within may have made her dangerous, but it was the human female that made her inconsolable. It had barely been four months since conception—and although Tyler knew the rules might be different for Brigitte, he doubted the child had come to term successfully. In the end, he had to take the misshapen corpse away from her before she could see. He couldn't bear to let her establish that instant bond between mother and child—one she had been frightened of—only to have to sever that connection himself. He dug a grave in a barren field—the grave he had once envisioned digging for her. But when he returned to the room, she was already gone, leaving behind the blood soaked sheets as the only evidence of the miscarriage.

Tyler searched the area thoroughly, hung around and hoped she would come back, but she had fled far away, returning to her roots and the grave of her sister. He didn't know how she'd made it to British Columbia or back east, what she had done to pay her way—he hadn't asked. When she appeared at the car window one day, almost a month after disappearing and just after he had moved on, thinking her lost, he gave into relief at her return instead of anger at her departure.

The anger had come later.

But they were past that now. They had forgiven each other for their sins, had moved on, or so Tyler had thought until he caught her in one of her solitary moments, staring into space and stroking her stomach. He hadn't confronted her—he didn't want to make things worse. Every time he saw her repeat the unconscious action, though, his heart broke a little for her, for what might have been.

Having lain bare his life for her, sacrificed what little he had possessed, what he could have claimed, he had expected her to do the same. His father, when he had been around, had bestowed upon Tyler the old adage, "Relationships are like two-way streets"—despite how fucked up his own was. Tyler had remained the dominant force in their coupling, but he had quickly discovered that he could not force Brigitte to do anything, or vice versa. He had given her everything freely, had waited patiently halfway the distance between them—she had continued to hold back, hang in the shadows.

He never asked her where she went when she had to leave. The scent of her lingered long after she had gone, stamped into his clothes, his car. He'd line up another job, do some shopping—anything to keep his mind occupied until she reappeared.

"Tyler? Tyler?"

Her voice broke him from his reverie, and he realized he was still lying, half-naked, across the bed. She was frowning at him, just out of reach.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he replied, stretching, "I'm fine."

"Do I need to light a fire under your ass to get you up and moving?" Brigitte said, shaking her head. "Come on. We've got places to go, werewolves to kill, people to scare another thousand bucks out of."

"Yes, Brigitte," he said, with a mock-eye roll. He half-expected her to turn suddenly playful, to pounce at him from where she was standing. But it wasn't one of those mornings. There were too many things at stake.

"Come on," she prodded again, quieter, giving him a gentle smile.

Tyler, because he would have done almost anything for Brigitte, obeyed.


End file.
